Site Search Navigation

Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

‘Better Call Saul’ Recap: What Kind of Show Is This?

By David Segal March 23, 2015 11:02 pmMarch 23, 2015 11:02 pm

Photo

Jonathan Banks on "Better Call Saul."Credit Ursula Coyote/AMC

Season 1, Episode 8: “Rico”

What kind of show is “Better Call Saul?” The answer seems to change each week. Episode 8 has many elements of a legal drama, in the vein of “L.A. Law” or “The Good Wife.” There are lawyers, clients, a badly behaving corporation, a cause of action and case law. There is also a bit of showboating at a negotiating table.

I’d go with the latter, in part because the changes in style seem purposeful. But even when the show becomes something familiar — and “Rico” as this week’s episode is called, is arguably the most familiar-feeling of them all — the writing, directing and acting lift it beyond the conventional.

A case in point is an early scene here, set a few years back in time from the start of the show. Jimmy McGill is a mailroom drudge at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill, the corporate firm his older brother co-founded. Jimmy has passed the bar, on his third try, having taken a correspondence law course from the University of American Samoa. (“Go land crabs,” he says, citing the fictional mascot of this fictional school.) He is celebrating with his colleagues when the firm’s alpha male and principal peacock, Howard Hamlin, breaks up the party to have a word with Jimmy.

The camera is outside the mail room, the door is closed and instead of overhearing this conversation, we hear nothing but the repetitive whir of a copying machine. Through Jimmy’s body language, we are left to deduce that Hamlin is delivering bad news. The only line we hear as Hamlin opens the door to leave is “Let’s reassess in six months. Thanks for understanding, Jimmy.”

The camera’s vantage point (it is as shut out as we are) transforms what could have been a cliché into a memorable scene with a smidgen of mystery. Jimmy has visceral loathing for Hamlin and some of it is surely rooted in that conversation.

From there, we return to the show’s present and Jimmy’s faltering practice in elder law. We also find out what this episode is about. During a visit to Sandpiper, an assisted living facility, Jimmy spots the makings of a class-action lawsuit. Sandpiper’s corporate owners have been overcharging residents, some of them Jimmy’s clients, for everyday items, like tissue paper and syringes. Add up those overcharges, then triple them because some of the supplies were purchased across state lines — running afoul of RICO (racketeering) laws — and you’re talking about a lot of money.

After Jimmy Dumpster-dives for evidence at Sandpiper, settlement talks are held in the home of Chuck McGill, Jimmy’s housebound older brother. Defense attorneys offer a measly $100,000 to make the case go away. “Twenty million,” Chuck counters, startling even Jimmy. “You heard me,” he deadpans, regaining his confidence as an attorney. “Twenty million or we’ll see you in court.”

The episode ends with Chuck heading outside to retrieve files from his brother’s car, apparently forgetting his aversion to electromagnetic waves. When he realizes that he’s feeling none of the agonizing symptoms that have ostensibly kept him indoors for more than a year, he drops the box he is holding, in some combination of shock and joy.

If nothing else, the scene underscores why “Better Call Saul” will never match “Breaking Bad” in intensity. The stakes in this new show are tiny by comparison. By Episode 7 in the first season of “Breaking Bad,” Walter White was risking his life and his marriage to cook meth for a maniac who was going to kill one of his own colleagues, just because. Bully for Chuck that he’s shed his psychosomatic illness, but as a problem in need of resolution, it has a pretty limited payoff. I felt as though the show’s writers wanted me to be more moved by this ending than I was.

The pathos in the episode is provided by Mike, who, after babysitting his granddaughter, encourages his daughter-in-law to spend the money that she knows is “dirty.” (It is drug money, illegally skimmed by cops.) “It’ll help a lot,” she says, relieved. “Course it’s only a drop in the bucket.”

Those words, and the need in his daughter-in-law’s voice, send Mike back to the veterinarian who patched up his bullet wound when he first arrived in town. The guy had hinted that he knew people in the underworld who could use someone with Mike’s talents. I love this vet. Mostly, I love the idea of a vet — a person in one the world’s more tender and beneficent professions — who helps criminals find henchmen.

The power of this encounter comes from knowing where it will lead. Mike will soon work for some very bad people, earning large sums of money, all of which he will try in vain to leave to his granddaughter. What we are watching here is the very tame beginning of a journey with a sad and violent end.

The art of “Better Call Saul” is the way it daubs paint each week on a canvas that is both familiar and new. The ultimate fate of these characters is not in doubt; they strut and fret while hemmed in by the known future. The trick is wringing third-act- quality drama out of scenes that are set in first and second acts.

It isn’t easy. The writers of this show are not reaching for heightened levels of suspense in episodes like “Rico.” This was a week devoted to legal wranglings over an elder-care scam, a topic you might skip if it made it into the pages of your paper’s business section. The pleasures these 47 minutes offer are pretty subtle. A round of applause for Dennis Boutsikaris, an actor with great off-Broadway credits, who plays Rick Schweikart, Sandpiper’s lead attorney. Any other show would overdo this character’s villainy. Here, Schweikart is just mercenary enough, the perfect mix of aggression, condescension and oily charm.

On the other side of the ledger, the writers appear to be flummoxed about what to do with Kim Wexler, the HH&M associate who is Jimmy’s frequent co-conspirator. As a character, she is strangely bland and indistinct. All we know is that she is deeply sane, conflicted about her job and fond of Jimmy. In other words, she is one-dimensional by the standards set by the oddballs and headcases in this show.

The only other scoop of vanilla in the cast is Stacey, Mike’s daughter in law. She’s a stressed out saint of a lady, and that’s it. For quirky, singular females, “Better Call Saul” has thus far provided us only with Betsy Kettleman, whose outer gloss of suburban housewife masked the heart of a mobster. But she’s been the exception.

So a final question to chew on: Do the writers of “Better Call Saul” have a hard time writing nuanced and multilayered women? Put another way, isn’t it time for Kim to get interesting?